


Agnosthesia (n.)

by peterpan_in_neverland



Series: have you ever felt things beyond the human language? [4]
Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: F/M, this is just me thirsting over ben im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25002118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterpan_in_neverland/pseuds/peterpan_in_neverland
Summary: His eyelids are narrowed and his lashes are long and she yearns to brush the pads of her fingers against them, to make his eyes flutter, his pupils dilate, his eyes— blue blue blue blue impossibly incredibly intoxicatingly blue something that shifts and changes with the light or the phases of the moon something indescribable and something she wants to grab with both hands and hold onto hold onto the way it makes her feel— skate down her body and drink her in.He smiles— it makes his eyes crinkle and— the corner of his mouth turns up and it sends something fluttery through her.--OR; the order of the things about Ben that Devi falls in love with
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Series: have you ever felt things beyond the human language? [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778254
Comments: 15
Kudos: 112





	Agnosthesia (n.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetichearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetichearts/gifts).



> I... wrote this in twelve hours. UNBELIEVABLE. I'm literally so sorry. Anyway, thank you Bhargavi, Leila, and Maggie for the encouragement I love you all more than Devi loves Ben's eyes. Also shoutout to Bhargavi and Leila for both freaking out about time dilation. 
> 
> If you enjoy, leave a kudos and a comment, they water my crops and clear my skin and make my cat respect me
> 
> (also, this is so completely unhinged, guys, like... it's just about Ben looking pretty theres exactly zero plot)

_ i. his eyes  _

She hates his eyes for ten years. 

They are blue and fractured, like the contents of a broken kaleidoscope. She studies them, once, in an Instagram post— a selfie, he is facing the sun and it is flooding into his irises, setting them alight like the hottest parts of a flame (she thinks, vaguely, that they are like the boiling surfaces of the hottest stars, bright blue and crackling, simmering with something more powerful than fireworks or flamethrowers) and, accidentally, falls in love with them. 

The darker ring around the outside, like the frame of a portrait, and the way light, light, impossibly blue centers, with layers and pockets of varying shades that are lacking in her eyes when she studies herself in the mirror.

She does not know why she’s thinking about this— him— now. Ben is two seats in front of her, absorbed in what Mr Shapiro is saying and  _ God,  _ she wants him to look at her. She hates that she wants him to look at her, and she thinks that it is reasonable. Reasonable that her hatred would settle to herself after shifting away from his eyes. 

Mr Shapiro calls on Devi and she answers— it is a miracle from God that she is able to, able to describe the shortcomings in security that contributed to John Kennedy’s assassination— and Ben turns around to look at her. 

Ben's eyes on her feel like stars imploding. 

His eyelids are narrowed and his lashes are long and she yearns to brush the pads of her fingers against them, to make his eyes flutter, his pupils dilate, his eyes— blue blue blue blue impossibly incredibly intoxicatingly blue something that shifts and changes with the light or the phases of the moon something indescribable and something she wants to grab with both hands and hold onto hold onto the way it makes her feel— skate down her body and drink her in. 

He smiles— it makes his eyes crinkle and— the corner of his mouth turns up and it sends something fluttery through her.

_ ii. his smile _

It starts in the bottom of her stomach, the coil of attraction to his smile. 

It is harder, for her, to describe his smile than his eyes. His eyes are easy to acquaint with words, but his mouth, the curve of his lips when they turn up, is almost impossible.

She is reminded, as she looks at him smiling, of the science of black holes. That time moves differently— slower, stretched out— the closer you are to one and that this, Ben smiling at her feels as though it is lasting lifetimes, stretching out her limbs and slowing the ticking on the hands on the clock behind his head, until time has stopped altogether. She does not ever— ever— want time to restart again, because that would mean that he has turned away.

He bumps into her outside of class, and she tries, engages her entire body in an attempt to find something to say, but then he looks at her with the curve of a smile like a half moon, and anything she could have expressed dies lonely on her tongue. 

“That was impressive, David,” he says, speaking through tilted lips and white teeth, “that you’re able to remember all that with such a tiny brain.” 

She can’t say anything, not with him looking at her like that, smiling like that, the shine of his teeth in the gap between his lips and it’s almost like he is proud of her and suddenly, even that thought is too much.

She shoulder checks him, and walks away, casting a look back his direction to make sure he has righted himself.

He‘s fine—  _ thank God,  _ her conscience nags— standing up straight and then,  _ fuck,  _ he runs a hand through his hair and she watches his fingers trail across the vertebrae in his neck. 

_ iii. his hands _

He is twirling a pencil between his fingers with an unnatural amount of ease. 

It rolls across his knuckles, and it looks like he is barely touching it. She’s never seen him do this before, flip his pencil like this, but then the notion that she has never paid attention— that she has never realized the degree of definition in his hands— crosses her mind, and she almost feels sick. 

Ben sets his pencil down and drums his fingers against the shiny, faux wood of the desk and each collision of his fingers makes her feel like fireworks exploding. 

She wants him to touch her. 

She wants him to trail his fingertips up the length of her arms, to cup her jaw, trace his thumb over her cheekbones. It shocks her, the enormity of her attraction, her desire. 

There is a world, she decides, where Ben wants her. Wants her like she wants him. Where he touches her, everywhere, makes her feel like he has harnessed lightning that he can make bleed into her skin and she wonders, faintly, if his hands have calluses.

He moves, in front of her, cracks his knuckles and pushes his sleeves up, exposing the skin of his forearms. 

_ iv. his forearms _

When he thinks, he traces his fingers over the inside of his forearm, the soft, tender skin where veins press, blue, against his arms.

Devi wants to trail her lips over the expanse of skin. 

She tries not to think about it, because if she thinks about kissing his skin— tipping his hand over and pressing her lips on the heel of his palm on the vein in his wrist along the tendons in his arms all the way to the crook of his elbow— she will never think of anything else. 

He raises his hand to answer a question and the way his sleeve falls, skating against the skin of his arms, the way his fingers flex when he stretches and—

she nearly combusts. 

When the bell rings, she grabs her books and shoves them into her bag and all but runs from the classroom. She is almost out the door, out of the room, when someone catches her arm and she turns around and 

_ eyes and smile and hands and arms and— _

_ v. him _

“Are you okay?” he asks, searching her face like he can see into her, can see what makes her exactly who she is. 

“I’m fine.” She pulls her arm from his grip and stalks away.

“Let me drive you home,” he calls, and she falters. Stops. Turns around. 

His hands are in his pockets, and that feels like a challenge. 

“I live ten minutes away,” she says, because all she knows to do with him is argue.

“I want to drive you home, Devi.” 

There is a level of danger, now, that is present in the experience of being alone with Ben. It is visceral, something so alive that she is sure she could reach out and touch it. 

“Okay,” she says, every atom in her body screaming that she is making the wrong choice.

They walk silently. 

It is almost cutting, the silence, and she wants to say something until the back of his hand brushes against hers, and sets her skin alight. She knows it is an accident, but something in her, something deep and primal and true, begs for it to be purposeful. 

His car is warm and leather decorated, smells like expensive leather polish and spearmint and she wants to remember it, this for the rest of her life, the way the heat on the passenger seat burns into her thighs and how he props his arm against her headrest and looks backwards to back out of the parking lot. 

It hits her, full force, like a tidal wave or a bolt of lightning, that Ben is beautiful. Blue eyes lit like the heat of a campfire and cords of muscle, a smile that makes her want to keep secrets and grooves in the palms of his hands that make her want to keep promises. 

He stops in front of her house and she suddenly feels bold, brave, the type of courage that you experience during torrential downfalls. “Why,” she starts, and hears her voice shake like a willow tree, “did you want to drive me home?” 

He shrugs, a faraway look in his eyes, something next door to wistful, and says, “you seemed like you were having a weird day. I just… wanted to make sure you got home alright.” 

Something about his words makes everything click into place. 

This is the final piece, the turn of the key that unlocks the true enormity of her feelings for Ben, and it is so wholly overwhelming that it pushes her forward, and all at once, she is kissing him. 

She knows it is a mistake the moment it happens, her hands underneath of his chin, but kissing him feels like breathing in mountain air, and she never wants to stop. 

His hands move into her hair and gasps against his mouth and thinks, for a fleeting moment, that he is going to undo every one of the knots around her heart.

And she has never wanted anything more. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading I'm going to leave you all my love and affection in my will. Leave a kudos if you enjoyed and drop a comment if you really enjoyed, they make me happier than anything else.


End file.
